Two Tribes

~ Yesterday, I attended my first Australian Football League (AFL) game at one of Australia’s iconic sporting venues, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, otherwise known as the MCG, or to real sporting aficionado’s simply as the ‘G’.

Now you have to understand there is a world of difference between Aussie rules football, or footy, as we like to call it, and the British version of football (which we call soccer), and what the Americans call football, but this is neither the time or place to try and explain those differences. Except to say that Aussie rules football is high scoring, fast (and sometime furious), full of high marks and aggressive tackles, and played by teams whose supporters are practically born into their favourite teams, just like previous generations of family members.

Facing off for a classic round of Aussie rules footy where arch rivals Melbourne and Collingwood. Personally, I would have been happier attending a match between my two hometown teams, the Adelaide Crows and Port Power, but unless they miraculously play off against each other in an AFL Grand Final (dreams are made of this), I can only see them compete against each other in Adelaide.

However, Melbourne is where this sport was born, where the biggest teams come from, and where the most passionate fans are located, so it was interesting to attend a game between two Victorian teams with a long history of competition between them. It was also interesting to be part of a crowd of 67,454 football fans who are not afraid to give voice to their anger, frustration, and gratuitous advice, with which they liberally shower their team and coaches (and the opposition team and coaches with).

I don’t know how many tourists or travelers make a point of attending major sporting events in the cities they visit, but I think you can learn a lot about a country and its people by doing so. I suspect Australian football fans are no different from British, American or any other national sporting fans you care to name. We are passionate, vocal, rude, outrageous, and make no excuses for being so.

Along with the previously mentioned abuse hurled at both teams, the greatest vitriol is reserved for the hapless umpires who seemingly can’t do a thing right, or make a correct decision – especially when it is your team which is on the end of a controversial ruling. It is at this point that all semblance of decorum and manners fly out the window (or more to the point, fly out of the mouths of adults who should know better). I don’t know if sporting fans are the same all around the world, but Australian sporting fans don’t hold back when they disagree with an umpire or referees decision. Anything goes, and if you are the type of person who is offended by profanity of the worst sort, you wouldn’t want to attend an Aussie rules football game.

I fully intend to undertake my own research on the behaviour of sporting fans during my summer trip to New York City, where I plan to attend a couple of baseball games and roller derby events, and any other major sporting event I happen across. I’ll let you know the results of my ‘research’ down the track.

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For the record, the game was a draw – a rare and unusual event in Australian football. However, Collingwood should have won, since they had 31 scoring shots to Melbourne’s 21 scoring shots. The final result: Melbourne 11-10 (76), to Collingwood 9-22 (76).

If you are wondering how the scores are arrived at, teams score by kicking goals or points. A goal is worth 6 points, and a point is counted as 1. Since Melbourne kicked 11 goals and 10 points the equation looks like this (6x11=66+10=76). For Collingwood it is (9x6=54+22=76). The team with the most points at the end of the game is declared the winner, and gets the four points allocated to the winning team which determines its place in the competition. Since the game was a draw, each team gets 2 points, and moves up or down the competition ‘ladder’ depending on how other teams in the competition performed over the weekend.

Whew, that’s more information than you probably needed to know, but there it is!

Four Seasons in One Day

~ Melbourne. Tim Finn was right. Mind you, I don’t know if he was writing about Melbourne exactly when he wrote Four Seasons in One Day, but the song’s title perfectly sums up Melbourne’s weather since I got here a week and a half ago.

Take today as an example. Cloudy and grey at first, then several hours of brilliant sunshine. Just as I got ready to head out for a while it started pouring with rain, so I sat down again to read a couple more chapters of Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father. An hour or so later, with the sun shining brightly in the early afternoon sky, I stepped out for a coffee and some lunch. Half way through my meal, I watched as a heavy shower of rain, washed the streets of Fitzroy North. Fifteen minutes later as I walked ‘home’, again bathed in sunlight, I couldn’t help but hum the Crowded House song whose title heads this entry.

So what have I been doing between bouts of sunshine, rain, and my last entry? Hanging out mostly. Walking into the city and back again – a round trip of 12-15 kilometres. Window shopping. Reading. Catching up on season one of The Wire. Checking out the open mic at the Empress Hotel just down the road. And discovering the final resting place of Australian Prime Ministers, renowned explorers, and the Elvis Presley memorial (see image), all located in the Melbourne General Cemetery along Lygon Street, Carlton North.

See, that’s the thing about extended vacations. About slow travel. You have the time to undertake weird things like walks through cemeteries, book reading, and just hanging out enjoying the location you are in. You don’t have to rush about trying to hit every major attraction or tourist trap just because that’s what every other visitor does, or because it is expected of you.

This time around, I am spending three weeks in Melbourne. Since I don’t have my own car, I will not get out of the city or the inner suburbs, but that’s fine by me. I’m happy just to hang out and take it easy. This is like the vacation you have when your not really having a vacation. It gives me time to think about the real journey that I am undertaking at the end of the month. My trip to New York City.

I feel like I’m conserving my energy and ideas for New York. Not to mention my money. And Melbourne in winter, is certainly preparing me for summer in New York. I can hardly wait, but wait I must.

In the mean time, it is threatening rain again here, and I’m settling down for a night in with the final two episodes of season one of The Wire. See you down the track…

Walking Melbourne

~ I’ve kicked off the shackles of illness and hit the streets of Melbourne town with a vengeance and a good pair of walking boots.

I set off at midday for a walk from Fitzroy North into the city centre – a pretty easy and doable distance of around 6 kilometres (3.7 miles). The object of the exercise (no pun intended) was to walk, explore, enjoy the sights, take a few photographs, eat, drink and make the most of a perfect, cool, clear sky Melbourne day.

You can see a complete route of today's walk here. I should however, point out that the route as displayed between the 4km and 10km markers looks like the ramblings of a drunken man – and I can assure you I was not staggering around the streets of Melbourne in an inebriated state. I can only assume that Walkmeter, the iPhone app I was using to map my route, had trouble getting good GPS coordinates due to the many high-rise buildings around the city centre. And it probably didn’t help that I kept disappearing into one building after another to explore some point of interest along the way.

In the end I also walked home again, completing a good afternoon of exploration of around 13.5kms (8.3 miles), that took in Brunswick Street, Federation Square, ACMI, the Arts Centre, Lygon Street and more besides.

My overall impression of Melbourne remains much the same as it was after my visit earlier this year. That is, there seems to be a pervasive sense of forward movement, continued growth and excitement about the place. Unfortunately, these sentiments can’t be said about my home town, Adelaide. But don’t get me started on that theme!

Melbourne’s alleyways are renowned for the quality of the graffiti that covers their walls, but the alleyways are not the only place you will find great graffiti. Yes, I know “great graffiti” sounds like an oxymoron, but let’s be honest, there are artists and practitioners of graffiti who do have real skills and creative ideas that rise above mere spraying of tags everywhere. Which is why I’ve decided to illustrate this post with some examples of the graffiti I discovered during my walk today.

This wonderful mosaic bench was one of three I saw at various locations along Brunswick Street. This is a good example of the types of public art you can see all over the centre of Melbourne, and the inner suburbs. In this respect, Melbourne reminded me of New York City, which also makes a point of placing public art all over the five boroughs that make up greater New York.

Melbourne even produces a public art walking map which guides you around a collection of some of the best examples of the city's public art works, and another brochure detailing the graffiti covered alleyways that have helped to make the Victorian capital so iconic and well known internationally.

There is much yet to discover in Melbourne, and I will barely scratch the surface over the next three weeks, but you have to start somewhere, and this has been my beginning.

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